This invention relates in general to certain new and useful improvements in games, and, more particularly, to a competitive action board game in which there are goals at opposed player ends of the board and each player operates striker means at his end to engage a playing piece to defend his goal and propel the piece toward the opponent's goal.
There are a large number of such competitive action board game devices commercially available. One of the major problems of many of these prior devices is that they fail to provide fast and uninterrupted play action. Where the striker means have restricted movement such as being attached to the board, the playing piece may become stalled in a location not readily accessible to the striker means. This tends to frustrate and annoy the players and detracts from the excitement and continuity of the game play. To alleviate this condition, the striker means may be totally separate from the game board and hand held so that all parts of the board are accessible to the striker means. Such separate striker means pose other problems in that the striker means are more readily lost or misplaced; further, the use of the separate striker means is much less controlled and can become wild and beyond the intended limits of the game play.
It is, therefore, a primary object of the present invention to provide a competitive action game apparatus where a playing piece can be propelled back and forth between a pair of opposed ends of a game board by striker means which have only limited movement, the board being arranged to ensure that the play will not be stopped by the playing piece coming to rest out of the reach of the striker means.
It is a further object to provide such a game apparatus where the board is inclined downwardly toward its opposed ends.
It is a further object to provide such a game apparatus wherein the striker means are movably mounted on shiftable support members.
It is a further object to provide such a game apparatus wherein the striker means on each support member comprise a pair of spaced apart rotatable flippers, and the support member is transversely shiftable.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a game apparatus of the type stated in which the shiftable members and the striker means located thereon are arranged so that the playing piece can pass through various playing piece passages, and into a goal area, unless the support member is shifted and the striker means are located in the trajectory of the playing piece.
It is another salient object of the present invention to provide a method of playing a game where a playing piece can be shifted across a game board toward either of a pair of opposed goal areas and where the game board has a surface which is inclined towards each of the goal areas, striker means at each goal area being limited in mobility and operable by a player to generally contemporaneously (i) move transversely and (ii) move to strike the playing piece.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide a game apparatus of the type stated which is relatively rigid and durable in its construction, and which can be manufactured at a relatively low unit cost.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a game apparatus of the type stated which is relatively simple in its construction, but which is nevertheless highly unique and designed to maintain the interest of the players.
With the above and other objects in view, our invention resides in the novel features of form, construction, arrangement and combination of parts presently described and pointed out in the claims.